We've got a big update on Deadrock Divide! Have some fun and get right in on the space blastin’ – Deadrock Demo! And don’t forget to let us know what you think!

DEADROCK DIVIDE - THE SHRINKENING

Bootsnake Games is proud to bring you a demo with WAAAAAAY less stuff in it than our last version. We did it! It took months of work, but we finally released less content. Yay! Our latest demo has one map. It’s tiny. You’ll get bored and probably give it poor Metacritic reviews for only having one map and a handful of enemies.

PLANNING AT CASTLE BOOTSNAKE

We've had a lot of people ask us what is next. It's a very good question, and one that is hard to really answer.

You'd think it would be easy. We're an indie developer and we can do what we want! So we're totally building the next crazy weird indie game! Or wait, we're going to support Containment and keep working on that! Or neither? Or both?

So the short answer is, "we're working on it." That is such a good non-answer. It is such a cliche type answer, but the it is also the truth.

We here at Bootsnake Games do enjoy us some words. So we’re pretty darn excited to hear that pictures are worth 1,000 words. That makes it easy for us to get our word count up CRAZY high in our blog posts. With this knowledge at hand, we are making this our highest word count post yet.

Wanna know what Bootsnake Games does not like? That would be working in a basement without air conditioning. It’s not pleasant. You also have to watch out for the mole people. Because as we all know, the mole people are trying to come from the subterranean fortresses to enslave and kill us all. We did our part killing them by the dozen for a few months. Now it’s up to the rest of you for a while.

We’d like to give you the opportunity to view the fortress where we defended mankind. So here our 7,000 word description of the old office.

DAMN! That place was crazy fancy. It must take quite a fancy, fancy place to make us leave all that behind. And that is because where we now work IS all fancy, fancy.

We now reside inside an office building. The building has an elevator! The building has restaurants nearby! Moving Bootsnake Games into this building is probably going to be looked upon as the greatest moment in the history of civilization. It’s either that or the invention of the Slurpee.

So let us take you on a whirlwind tour of how to build a better Castle Bootsnake. First, we start with Ikea Galant series desks. Imagine us putting the desks together. Now imagine us putting them together wrong. And I mean every single desk was assembled wrong. We are the future of carpentry.

Now we add our computers to our desks. BAM! We can work again!

Next we add random office crap to make it look like we are working. When we have guests we like to draw things on white boards and tell them we are adjusting the 4d3d3d3.

Then we add a couch. Some couches come built with wives!

Then we add booze.

Now we stamp our name all over the place. This is the sign outside our office. Seeing it for the first time was a pretty epic moment for us.

We are even more lucky to be next door to our friends. There are 4 fine young gentlemen that are working next door. We’ve worked with some of them before, but they are all awesome so here are links to their stuffs!

William Steven Snoey IV – He’s working on some secret stuff right now. If it’s anything like his facial hair it will be awesome. http://stevesnoey.blogspot.com

Yay neighbors!

So now, Bootsnake Games has a new home! It's a pretty amazing thing. It makes everything feel so much more real than before. The basement was awesome and it's where we started, but now we move forth with a way more awesome place!

So you probably are thinking to yourselves, “This Bootsnake Games sure does have its act together in such a fashionable way!” And you would be correct, sir or madam! Mostly at least.

You see, though handsome as we may be, we are not completely flawless. “Lies!” our mothers cry out in the night. But sadly truthful.

We have taken a few bumps, bruises, and wooden nickels along the path of making our own brand of game. From small things, like not having an ink cartridge when one of us wanted to print out a coupon, to more major things, like not having tested our FTP servers until someone needed a file instantly. We have had some mismanaged awesome.

The following is a sample of where we would improve the Bootsnake Experience Project had we all started over. It’s a personal journey for each of us like a quest by a hapless hero, so it’s presented by each person.

Jeremy:

1. Feedback. We've had probably 20 or more people play the game at this point, and have gotten amazing feedback from them all. I would have gotten more people in house sooner playing the game. Even at it's early stages, this is huge and will make the game better in the long run.

2. Production. Even with three guys in a basement, keeping some form of production in place to help everything stay on track is good. Production done right will give you more time to do what you want to do, as well as more time for polish and shine near the end. We've had this to an extent, but I think we could have done a bit more of it.

Mat:

Now that we've been at this game thing for a couple months, there are some things I would go back and tell myself if I had a time Machine.

1. You look handsome, damn.

2. Do more pre-production! I came onto the project later than Dru and Jeremy and just hit the ground running producing art to go into the game. We needed to see the game working so I had to just go with it. I wish I spent more time defining a cohesive look for the game from the beginning. It would have made it easier on us and people outside Bootsnake that have helped us. It has all worked out in the end but we could have saved some headaches along the way. Plus, in hindsight, we had enough time for it early on.

3. Don't try to do everything. There isn't enough time for it. Jeremy really helped taking over the environment levels. I'm still helping with props here and there but being able to concentrate on a smaller set of tasks is making those better than doing everything rushed.

4. Try the Yakiudon at Sam's Sushi earlier. I can't believe I just now tried it. I've been missing out for 3 months.

Mat out!

Dru:

Editor. We have a good level editor in place that lets us do almost everything we need to for level design. I really wish we had built it sooner and with more breadth to what we can edit. We could have been able to iterate much faster in many areas with a more robust editor on day one.

More tools and art support. I’ve been building tools to support art along the process to speed up tedious and difficult processes. It’s been a huge boon for our ability to work on new stuff very quickly. The one downfall is that I feel if someone says, “That seems nice to have.” That really should be translated by engineering into “We really need this to make the game better.” The more tools we have, the better the game will be.

So there is the opinion from three fine young men about how to improve the Bootsnake experience . . . in the past.

Were we all to do it again, we’d probably just start a pawn shop or something because this shit is hard. Looking back lets you look forward so you can look to the next project where you will look back and see where you looked the wrong way. This is an important philosophy we have. We are making a game right now that is so freaking cool you wish you could ask it to dance.

Every day we get better at our silly little jobs is a day our games get better.

As if making games isn't hard enough, our communications guy is now forcing us to "communicate" with the world. We were putting together the first post for the site when he and I disagreed about some/most/all of the lines of text in the post. See, we wanted some text that really came at ya and brought some thunder, lighting, and delicious brownies. He felt we went a bit too far and the text was more like a drunk and/or creepy uncle filling your favorite sneakers with shaving cream.

So, in the interest of communicating with the world, here's the conversation he and I had about the subject:

Thanks Uncle Creepy!

Dru says: You up for a call tonight still?Troy says: Are you ok with skipping tonight? I'm sicker than a dog. I'm on meds kinda sickDru says: Yeah, fine with us. Want to meet tomorrow or we missin a week?Troy says: Let's pick it up tomorrow, there's too many important things to discuss.Dru says: okay, 6?Troy says: Yup, sounds good.Dru says: Awesome, I'll try to get the social links up on the site by tomorrow. Did you get a chance to look at the about page?Troy says: I did, the pictures are funny. A we-should-replace-those-immediately kinda funny. The cub scouts reference cracked me up though.Dru says: AwesomeTroy says: Even if Thinmints suck.Dru says: WHAT THE F@%*?!Troy says: Sorry dude, just sayin'.Dru says: I think we should pull the high five out of the about page ... or from the other post, but that's just me. Mat says he looks stoned in his picture.Troy says: You have like 30 high-five references on the site. I think one high-five suggests friendly. 30 high-fives suggests inappropriate touching. Mat does kinda look stoned. Is he trying for sly?Dru says: He is.Troy says: He needs a finger on his chin to sell that. And to smoke less pot.Dru says: Do you still want to use a photographer? we are not opposed to this course of action at all.Troy says: Yes, I do.Dru says: SweetTroy says: We can do something fun and candid, we just need better shots in general. As for the text, I do like the guts of what you've got, but I'll have some suggestions for edits.Dru says: SweetTroy says: Mostly grammatical type stuff.Dru says: Yeah, I know that isn't the best.Troy says: And I remember reading something about being frothy that made me say "wah?". Hang on...Troy says: Here it is: "...a frothing desire to make awesome games." I'm not sure why, but that grossed me out.Dru says: You are a sissy. You don't like teeth shattering, you don't like frothing. Apparently you hate imagery.Troy says: Your mom is a sissy. Anyway, I hate imagery that hurts my teeth and/or suggests sexual moisture.Dru says: Frothing makes me think of frothing at the mouth looking at cake.Troy says: Because you have sex with cake.Dru says: After American Pie I did a taste test, if you will.Troy says: hahaha, gross! You are making me cough.Dru says: You make me cough when you pull out lines I enjoy!Troy says: You are a masochist of the typed word.Dru says: Maybe so. The teeth shattering line got a reaction from everyone we showed it to. I'm keeping that one in my back pocket for laterTroy says: That's a good place for it.Dru says: I'm not like totally tied to it ... I don't really know what this sort of thing is supposed to look like.Troy says: That's the good news: It needs to look however you guys want it to look. Just, you know, with things like punctuation.Troy says: I'm not trying to kill your puppy. I won't be sad if you have to shatter people's teeth, just grossed out. Your vision is what's important.Dru says: Ok, imagine sitting in front of your TV.Troy says: Ok.Dru says: ...you load up the ol 360 and look around, and then you see this typewriter font that says [redacted], against a white background. You decide to load it up to see what this little mess is all about. It's all fancy.Troy says: I like the sound of this.Dru says: Then all of a sudden the room starts sliding. Your lamps and shit get knocked over, just like that Maxell advertisement from the 80s. Then...Dru says: BAM! Your teeth shatter.Dru says: BOOTSNAKE GAMES! I think I just wrote our 2nd post!Troy says: I don't like the idea that I need to see a dentist after playing your game. It gives me a headache thinking about my teeth shattering as a result of the awesome.Dru says: haha, I'm posting this IM conversation.Troy says: Please don't.

The crew has been gearing up for this moment for awhile, and now we finally get to announce Bootsnake Games as a real video game development studio! In celebration of this announcement we’re sending you a personalized high five through the Interwebs in the form of this press release.

Here’s what you need to know about Bootsnake Games: It starts with a dark, dangerous concoction of video game industry veterans, stewed for years in the black cauldron of other people’s companies. Add to that the passion to make small batches of quality gaming goodness and the driving need to bring sanity to the day-to-day process of developing awesome games, and you’ve got Bootsnake Games.

So while this may be the first time you’ve heard of us, we’ve actually been hard at work for months now, toiling away on our first title. We’d love to tell you more about it, but it’s such an awesome project that we’re not entirely sure you can handle it -- yet. Besides, we've only just met!

You see, we’re gamers just like you,--and we’ve founded this company on the idea that you can love your job and create small, killer games without all the corporate crazy. We’re going to be sharing a lot of information about how our tiny indie video game company got started, and you’ll get the chance to meet the Bootsnake Games staff in all our glory. Like an Undead Hydra Demon Lemur, we’ve got three heads and a lot to say about our game design philosophies and our plans as an indie development studio.

So stick around friends, you might just learn a thing or two about what love is.